Absolutely nothing happened in Sector 83 by 9 by 12 today.
I repeat, nothing happened in Sector 83 by 9 by 12.

Six* Easy Pieces

Courtesy of Google. These are things I wrote at various points in the past, back in the days before blogs and munu. I didn't take any particular care to record them (for reasons that will become obvious), but others have done so.

Piece The First: The Great Microprocessor Conspiracy

Uwe Sattelkow wrote:

I need general information about CPUs, about architectures, etc. Anything relating to the topic "What makes a CPU fast?", nothing on specific CPUs. Could anyone tell me, where I can get information from? (webpages, ...)

The critical thing is to use fresh CPUs. It's well known that CPUs slow down over time; for example, my SGI O2 was quite zippy when I bought it back in 1997, today it's rather slow, and I expect within another year or two it will be almost unuseable.

This has given rise to a tremendous scam that has netted major computer vendors billions of dollars over the years. This is how it works:

New CPUs are fresh and clean, with wide-open pathways that allow electrons to zoom freely from pin to pin. As time passes, the occasional electron will get stuck in a tight corner, or overshoot an output buffer and hit the insulator and shatter. These particles - electrons and fragments of electrons such as deutrinos and kleptons - are known in the business as "cruft".

The "cruft" gradually builds up and clogs the once-wide paths, so that the problem starts to accelerate. Soon the once-fast system is getting old and slow, and at this point the vendor steps in and offers an "upgrade".

In fact, this "upgrade" is nothing more than a fresh, clean CPU. Even worse, the vendor will then take your old CPU, clean out the "cruft" with compressed air (they used to use freon, but this has since been banned), and - get this - re-sell the refurbished CPU as an "upgrade" to another customer!

What's more, vendors have over time been *deliberately* making the pathways on chips ever-narrower! The broad 3-micron boulevardes of the old days have been replaced by twisty 0.18 micron alleys, and if they're not stopped, we'll soon be trapped within goat tracks just 0.1 micron wide, forcing the electrons to move sideways!

I encourage everyone to write to their local media outlet or political representative to protest this outrageous behaviour!

(Originally posted to alt.test.wombat , Feb 24 2001)

* Plus or minus five.

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Die, Cityrail, Die!

Okay, so you needed to close the North Shore line between Christmas and New Year's for trackwork. I can accept that.

But that doesn't mean you can screw up every other train service in Sydney!

It took me 45 minutes just to get from Museum Station to Redfern. Normally, that takes about 5.

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That's Not Reindeer On The Roof

I have possums.

You live in Hornsby. Everyone has possums.

In my walls.

Yay! Wallpossums!

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The Death Of Productivity

Pixy Misa, you have risen to become leader of the Americans. May your reign be long and prosperous. The Americans have knowledge of Irrigation, Mining, Ceremonial Burial, Pottery, and Roads.

That last sentence is true enough.

UFO-1
Detected

Size...................Very Small
Altitude...............Very Low
Heading................East
Speed..................616

And if Pixy can't go to the movies, the movies will have to come to Pixy. I was pleasantly surprised at how well that runs on my notebook, which only has Intel chipset graphics and is, according to the box, not supported at all. In fact it runs pretty well (scrolling is not as smooth as one might wish, but it's not bad either), and even adapts to the wide-screen 1280x768 format.

So if you don't hear from me for a week or two, it's because I'm busy making movies about alien empires on Mars.

Update: My new film, Dead Men Don't Die Twice II, seems to be a hit! Well, it's complete rubbish, but it's making money for the studio...

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In Yer Face, Behe!

Via, oh, lots of places, comes the news of a well-deserved smackdown of the Intelligent Design movement:

After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980's; and (3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community. As we will discuss in more detail below, it is additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research.

Even better:

After this searching and careful review of ID as espoused by its proponents, as elaborated upon in submissions to the Court, and as scrutinized over a six week trial, we find that ID is not science and cannot be adjudged a valid, accepted scientific theory as it has failed to publish in peer-reviewed journals, engage in research and testing, and gain acceptance in the scientific community. ID, as noted, is grounded in theology, not science. Accepting for the sake of argument its proponents’, as well as Defendants’ argument that to introduce ID to students will encourage critical thinking, it still has utterly no place in a science curriculum. Moreover, ID’s backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID.

A personal favourite is this paragraph:

A significant aspect of the IDM is that despite Defendants’ protestations to the contrary, it describes ID as a religious argument. In that vein, the writings of leading ID proponents reveal that the designer postulated by their argument is the God of Christianity. Dr. Barbara Forrest, one of Plaintiffs’ expert witnesses, is the author of the book Creationism’s Trojan Horse. She has thoroughly and exhaustively chronicled the history of ID in her book and other writings for her testimony in this case. Her testimony, and the exhibits which were admitted with it, provide a wealth of statements by ID leaders that reveal ID’s religious, philosophical, and cultural content.

Proponents of ID have often claimed that ID is not religion, but an alternative scientific explanation. We have already established that ID is not science; what the Dover trial showed was that it is indeed religion, and that those who make claims to the contrary are either unreasonably credulous or lying.

Moreover, in turning to Defendants’ lead expert, Professor Behe, his testimony at trial indicated that ID is only a scientific, as opposed to a religious, project for him; however, considerable evidence was introduced to refute this claim. Consider, to illustrate, that Professor Behe remarkably and unmistakably claims that the plausibility of the argument for ID depends upon the extent to which one believes in the existence of God. (P-718 at 705) (emphasis added). As no evidence in the record indicates that any other scientific proposition’s validity rests on belief in God, nor is the Court aware of any such scientific propositions, Professor Behe’s assertion constitutes substantial evidence that in his view, as is commensurate with other prominent ID leaders, ID is a religious and not a scientific proposition.

And let's not forget our friend Wedge:

The Wedge Document states in its “Five Year Strategic Plan Summary” that the IDM’s goal is to replace science as currently practiced with “theistic and Christian science.”

Kind of a giveaway, that.

The Commissar has the complete ruling. Thanks to Jon at JREF for finding some particularly fine quotes.

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Potential Bombshell

If this story holds up, it could spell big trouble for the NSW Government and the Police Commissioner:

Senior police today pledged to keep up their presence on Sydney's streets as members of a Muslim youth group and the surf movement held peace talks on the boardwalk at Cronulla.

But a leaked document has indicated that police were not equipped to respond to Monday's violence in Cronulla, in which people were assaulted and cars, shopfronts and windows were smashed.

The Seven Network said it had obtained a police incident report instructing officers to stay away from one of the trouble spots – believed to be Punchbowl Park in Sydney's west – on Monday night.

The park is believed to have been the meeting place for scores of men who formed a vehicle convoy which drove to Cronulla unimpeded by police.

The report showed those in the crowd were suspected of being Middle Eastern criminals who had been involved in malicious damage and civil disobedience offences throughout the Sutherland Shire, the network said.

The report said "a direction was given to police about midnight not to enter the area and antagonise these persons".

Right. Don't antagonise the rioters, because they might, um, riot.

I call for the 48-hour rule on this, though.

(via comments at Tim Blair's)

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Sydney Riots, Day Thr... Oh.

It appears that if you fill the area with police and arrest the rioters at gunpoint, they stop rioting.

A church burned down overnight and that is being investigated as arson, but other than that, not much happened last night.

Even the possum turf war that has been waking me at dawn every day seems to have been called off. Good work.

For those of you trying to make sense of things from the media reports - never an easy task - this timeline from the Wog Blogger may help.

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Sydney Riots, Additional Reporting

Tim Blair has some posts up, and his commenters are active as always. He also notes the CNN blooper.
Silent Running
RWDB
Evil Pundit
Right Wing Death Bogan

One thing becomes obvious: The mainstream media, never mind their habit of editorialising and passing it off as news, can't even get the facts straight. Those layers of editors and fact-checkers must be off on an extended lunch break, I guess.

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Not France

I hope that The Daily Telegraph doesn't mind me extensively quoting from this article, because they are doing some of the best reporting on the events.

Police ordered scores of trouble makers to the ground at gunpoint in a bid to regain control following a day of rising tension across the city.

The first flashpoint was Lakemba, where a small group of Caucasian men began vandalising cars near the mosque. A crowd of about 500 local men quickly gathered, some of them turning on the interlopers while others threw missiles at police.

Shortly afterwards carloads of Lakemba men headed for Cronulla and nearby suburbs, bashing passers-by and smashing shops and vehicles.

Although intent on destruction, dozens of the intruders were arrested as they ran into a massive police net strung across Cronulla, Brighton-le-Sands and Maroubra.

The violence began at the Lakemba mosque, where hundreds of local men gathered before a hard core of hotheads drove east late in the evening.

About 70 car-loads hit Cronulla soon after 10 o'clock. Police had already began sealing off roads into the beach suburb.

Within 20 minutes police were responding to reports of assaults, vandalism, men on the streets with baseball bats, bashings and shots being fired.

A number of cars were stopped by police, with guns drawn.

Drivers and passengers were swiftly dragged on to the pavement and arrested.

At one stage police were chasing a Ford Laser which had tried to run down officers.

"Get out of the car, get out of the car," officers yelled at the driver when he was stopped minutes later on Elouera Rd.

A man and a youth with their hands up got out of car and were forced to the ground at gunpoint.

The police response could have been better, but it could have been a whole lot worse. Riots have to be stopped fast, and hopefully that's what will happen.

One note on the vandalising of cars at the Lakemba mosque: This article reports the situation a little differently:

Hundreds of youths last night rampaged in Lakemba, while further trouble was brewing in Maroubra and again in Cronulla. A woman police officer was injured when more than 400 youths of Middle Eastern descent smashed cars and rioted at Lakemba mosque.

Even local newspapers have trouble keeping the story straight.

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Sydney Riots, Day 2

Today, it's CNN taking the honours for abysmally inaccurate reporting:

Anti-Arab rioters smash cars, windows in Sydney

Monday, December 12, 2005; Posted: 2:44 p.m. EST (19:44 GMT)

Police arrest a man Sunday at Cronulla Beach in Sydney.

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Violence on the streets of Sydney spilled into a second night Monday, as scores of youths drove through beachside suburbs smashing windows of stores, homes and apartments, police said.

Any hopes that a race riot Sunday would be an isolated incident were shattered after dark when car loads of youths rampaged through southeastern Sydney chased by hundreds of police vehicles and a helicopter.

A police spokesman said the violence first broke out in Cronulla, where Sunday's riots also started.

"We have shops damaged at Caringbah, cars damaged at Cronulla," according to Paul Bugden, spokesman for New South Wales police. "We have six arrests at this stage."

One person was apparently hit with a rock outside the Cronulla police station, he added, saying that youths riding around in at least two dozen cars were involved in the violence.

Bugden said he did not have descriptions of those involved in Monday night's rampage, but said that clearly it was linked to Sunday's rioting.

One tiny problem: It wasn't "Anti-Arab rioters" at all, it was Lebanese Muslim street gangs. Let's see if CNN changes the headline to "Arab rioters smash cars, windows in Sydney"...

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Sydney Riots

I wasn't going to write anything about this, because I know little more about the events themselves than what has been reported on the news. And I'm not a resident of Cronulla or Maroubra; I live way up on the northern edge of Sydney.

But when it comes to something like this:

The violence started at Cronulla after about 5000 people gathered at the beach, many were chanting racist comments and waving Australian flags.

The rioters then moved on to other beach suburbs, vandalising cars and targeting innocent individuals.

I really have to comment.

What happened at Cronulla Beach was a protest against ongoing harassment and intimidation by Lebanese Muslim street gangs that turned ugly under the influence of alcohol and stupidity, never a great combination.

The second part was an planned attack by the street gangs, not by the Cronulla rioters. That's some really amazingly bad reporting on the part of Sky News, but the BBC is hardly any better:

Thousands of young white men have converged on Cronulla Beach in Sydney, Australia, and attacked people of Arabic and Mediterranean background.

...

By Sunday night, the violence appeared to have spread to a second beach suburb, Maroubra, where men armed with baseball bats reportedly attacked cars.

With no indication whatsoever that we are talking about two entirely different groups.

Put not your faith in the media, for they are lying weasels.

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A Brief History

I keep losing this thing - I've posted it on other blogs when the subject came up, but I've never posted it here, so every time I need it I have to spend five minutes Googling first.

So, here it is:

A BRIEF HISTORY OF FRANCE SINCE THE REVOLUTION

1789-1792 Period of increasing strife, culminating in French Revolution (technically, the first of many French revolutions)
1792-1804 Chaos (also known as the First Republic)
1792-1795 The Convention
1795-1799 The Directory
1799-1804 The Consulate
1804-1815 Empire of Napoleon I
1815-1830 Restoration of Bourbon monarchs.
1830 Revolution
1830-1848 Louis-Philippe rules as King of the French. (Yeah, they had a revolution and ended up with another king.)
1848 Revolution
1848-1852 Chaos (also known as the Second Republic)
1851 Napoleon III kicks the bastards out
1852-1870 Empire of Napoleon III
1870 Revolution
1870-1940 Third Republic - which, for France, doesn't suck too badly
1871 Attempts at restoration of monarchy fail
1871 Paris Commune
1877 Attempts at restoration of monarchy fail
1940-1944 German occupation, Vichy government
1940 British sink French fleet, French actually fight back for first time in WWII
1945 France rescued by U.S. and Britain
1946 Attempts at restoration of monarchy fail
1946-1958 Fourth Republic
1958-present Long slow decline (also known as the Fifth Republic)

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Into Hot Water

I have hot water!

Let's see:

The electricity was disconnected.
The gas was turned off.
The hot water system (which is one of those crappy "instantaneous" ones) requires both gas and electricity. The gas supply was turned off at the hot water system as well, and the electrical outlet was a good 18" away from the end of the power lead. Nice design work there, guys. I'm too stupid to unwind the power cord from the top of the heater. Or maybe it was just more obvious to my brother, who's a couple of inches taller than me.

Anyway, fixed now. I have hot water again. All I need now is to get my washing machine repaired, and then sleep for a year.

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The Fun Never Stops

So there I am, heading into the bathroom to wipe off the sweat that comes when you have spent the day shifting eighty boxes of books from the top floor down into the garage in 30 degree heat. And I reach for the wash cloth, and I get a handful of AAH GIANT SPIDER GET IT OFF ME GET IT OFF ME!!!!!!

I think the spider had much the same reaction, and it bounced off the wall and ran under the sink. I hosed it down with bug spray and captured it in a cotton-bud box. Long legs, medium-sized body, spiky hairs: a huntsman, which is pretty harmless, and probably the most common large spider around here.

They can get pretty big; fortunately, mine wasn't quite the size of this one: more...

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At Least Somebody Knows What They Are Doing

So eventually I got the keys, went 'round to the new place, looked around. It's even smaller than I remembered. I looked at it briefly and went for the other unit instead, and then I waited... And waited... And waited... For five weeks.

And since I have to move by the end of the year and Christmas is only two weeks away, I had to go for the unit I didn't want. They're in the same complex, but of 16 units, 10 have nice balconies, 12 have attached garages, four have gardens with gates so you can get in without going through the house, and two have nice views overlooking the... Well, it's a swamp, but it's a nice swamp.

My unit has none of those. It's the runt of the litter, but it costs as much as the others. Which I guess is why it was available.

What it also doesn't have is electricity. Something the real-estate agent also didn't mention.

The only redeeming factor was Energy Australia. I called them after five on a Friday afternoon, and they will have the power on tomorrow. Thanks guys.

Update: +10 points for organising the connection on a Saturday. -20 points for not actually recording the reconnection request in the system. -20 points for insisting that the power was already connected when I called to complain on Saturday morning. -10 points for closing at 12 PM sharp on Saturday, two minutes before I located the main switch box with the tag on my unit's switch saying that power had been disconnected.

+10 points for organising a free emergency reconnection on Saturday afternoon. +10 points for doing it in less than an hour.

So, -20 points for the week. Must try harder.

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Scenes From A Real Estate Agent

Them: So here are your keys: Front door, sliding door, letter box, windows.

Me: What about the garage?

Them: It doesn't have a garage.

Me: more...

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Packing Or Unpacking?

I'm moving house again. Not by choice; I won't go into the vermin bastard scum-sucking pig-dog details. Anyway, it's the usual last-minute scramble, and I was called away yesterday to tend to a sick Linux box, taking five hours out of my schedule, which was not really very helpful. Hence the comparison below.

Five weeks after it was supposed to be available, New New Pixy Central still isn't available, and I've had to move into a different and less suitable place. Bah and humbug. The only plus with the New New New place is that it has air conditioning in the main bedroom. Considering what just happened to the weather here - the cold spell broke and temperatures jumped 10 degrees overnight - air con is actually a big consideration.*

At least this time I will have internet access available at all times, thanks to my shiny new(ish) notebook and its shiny new wireless internet adaptor. And I seem to be doing better than last time, when the scramble was not so much last-minute as last-minute-plus-two-days. That wasn't fun.

Anyway, my empty boxes are calling to be filled with books. I shall return.

* I checked, and the maximum temperature in Sydney jumped from 26C on Tuesday to 39C yesterday. I thought it was kind of warm...

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What's The Difference...

Between a broken Linux server and a real-estate agent?

If you spend half your day arguing with a broken Linux server, there's a chance you will persuade it to do what it said it would.

Between a broken Windows server and a real-estate agent?

You're not allowed to kick real-estate agents.

Some Translations From Real Estate Agentese

The property is available now.

The property is not available.

The buyer is confident he will settle this week.

The buyer is living in dream land.

I will call you this afternoon.

I will not call you this afternoon.

I will definitely call you this afternoon.

Not only will I not call you this afternoon, I have instructed the receptionist to tell you I am out.

The papers will be ready for you to sign at 9 o'clock on Saturday morning.

We have no idea when the papers will be ready for you to sign, but we will keep that a secret until 4:30 Friday afternoon.

Everything is in order for you to move in.

Sometime next year. Probably.

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Australia's Best Blog

Singing Bridges:

Echoing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which was freed from material constraints when the resonant frequency was struck by the wind.

Translation: It fell down.

Warning: Australia's "best blog" is a godawful pile of leftist crap. Follow link at own risk.

(via Australia's best blog that isn't a godawful pile of leftist crap)

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No Pajamas For You!

Pajamas Media has a Blogjam (that is, a chat or web forum thread) on who should control the internet, featuring none other than moonbat wannabe internet thief, Peng Hwa Ang:

Professor Dr. Peng Hwa Ang is specialised in censorship and regulation of the Internet.

In his capacity of internet expert, Professor Peng Hwa Ang has consulted for the Singapore government and the UN's Development Programme - concerning the Digital Opportunities Taskforce Report in 2001.

Peng Hwa Ang has been involved with the Bertelsmann Foundation in a series of projects looking at Internet self-regulation, self-rating and filtering. He was part of an "expert group", that met several times to develop internationally-accepted seal of self-ration that was robust to criticisms by civil libertarians.

Peng Hwa Ang has published more than two dozen academic papers and book chapters and edited three books in the area of media law and policy with a special focus on the internet.

He is especially known for his work on content regulation and censorship of the internet. He has presented his work in that area before more than a dozen countries.

Given that background, it is little surprise that Dr Ang sees the UN as the best organisation to control the Internet. Never mind the fact that it is working just fine as it is - as far as the people who use it are concerned.

Dr Ang:

Control is probably not the best word for this given how loaded that term is. Governance is the better word. The internet needs governance in the same way that the most critical things in our lives need governance--air, water, traffic, education, healthcare, etc. Look at how we are communicating. We have to coordinate our time, how we type, what we type. If there is no coordination--a form of governance--we cannot get this blogjam going. All we would have is a jam.

All of which is complete nonsense. The Internet is not a system that needs governance, much less control. It is a system of independent networks connected by mutual agreement. And that's all that's necessary.

The Internet works not because of some governing body, but because the component parts of it have come tovarious arrangements. Huge numbers of individual arrangements. There are standards, but the way the Internet works is highlighted by the name of those standards: They are called RFCs, or "Requests for Comments". They are not handed down by a governing body; rather they are passed around by the users of the Internet who think they may have a good idea. And they become de facto standards because the more people follow them, the more useful they become.

Dr Ang:

The key concern, not mentioned at all in the piece, is this: the US had and technically still has oversight of the internet’s root zone system. What does it mean in practice? Well, just before the US went to war in Iraq, the domain name of Iraq—.IQ (or country code Top Level Domain ccTLD) disappeared from cyberspace. In other words, if Yahoo then had wanted to register its domain name in Iraq, it could not register Yahoo.com.iq. This was the unspoken fear of MRW at WSIS: that critical infrastructure and services for an information age laid on the internet could be shut off if the US, for any reason, decided to do so.

The story of why that happened belongs to the X-Files unless someone like Seymour Hersh digs it out. The official and public version is that the person who managed the .IQ ccTLD was jailed for unauthorised sale of computer parts to Syria and Libya. In other words, the US Government did not shut off the .IQ. It’s just that the person in charge could not go to office to turn it on. Will we ever know the real reason?

You just gave us the real reason. The story of the .iq domain is well documented (Warning: Contains facts, but also absurd levels of anti-American bias) and none of it reflects on the US at all.

It is therefore disingenuous to describe what was done at the Summit as an “internet grab”. The US did not have to do an “internet grab” because it already had the internet in its hands.

The US built the Internet.

It is important to note that the United Nations is not Kofi Annan. Neither is it 10, 20 or 30 countries. It is an institution made up of almost all the countries on the planet that has done good work on healthcare, education, development etc. I speak not from the experience of someone in Singapore because the UN is invisible to many in Singapore, but from talking to others in the region. The oil-for-food programme, as Mr Annan admits, should not have come under the UN. But I can understand why it did. Only the UN has the credibility as a third-party to be acceptable by Most of the Rest of the World (MRW).

As a citizen of the rest of the world, Dr Ang, I can tell you that you are hopelessly misguided. The UN is completely corrupt from top to bottom; the Oil for Food debacle, and the even worse debacle of the investigation into Oil for Food, has proved this beyond doubt. The fact that there are organisations that would be even worse as Internet governors - the governments of China, Cuba, and Iran come to mind - does not mean that the UN would be anything short of disastrous in that role.

I've had some people email me that they would (a) not trust the UN to watch over $5 much less my/our internet and (b) if they want their internet go build "their own damn internet".

You should listen to them.

I happened to meet Bob Kahn walking about the resort town of Sidi Bou Said near Tunis and he said that it is quite easy to set up a parallel internet universe aka "their own damn internet".

Indeed it would.

My replies have been that (a) the UN is made up of governments and forced to make a choice most people trust their own governments--and therefore the UN--than the USA and (b) building "their own damn internet" is the worst possible outcome for everyone because everyone loses, with the USA being the biggest loser should that happen.

That's an interesting assertion, Dr Ang. Would you care to back it up?

To sum up where I'm coming from:

1. The internet needs governance for its next stage of development. That is, it needs coordination, exchange of best practices, laws and policies (and other expressions that substitute for control if one does not like it) to bring it to the next level. There are mischiefs to be cured. Hence a need for a forum.

No it doesn't.

2. The process, especially at the international level, has to be open and inclusive. That is transparent. And inclusive of countries (multilateral) and inclusive of diverse groups (multistakeholder).

Since your proposal is unnecessary, and indeed actively harmful, the way you go about the process is of little interest.

3. Developing countries also need help and some serious money into the Digital Solidarity Fund--managed in a transparent way--is essential

When said developing countries have representative governments with universal suffrage and are actively working to stamp out corruption, then it will be worthwhile giving them aid to build up their Internet infrastructure. Until that day, not a penny.

Dr Ang, you seem not to have the faintest idea of what the Internet is and how it works, which one would think would be a drawback given the role you have assigned yourself.

The Internet is the network of networks. Individual networks, owned and controlled by individuals, corporations, governments and other groups, are interconnected by mutual agreement. There is no central body controlling the Internet. There is ICANN, which plays a central role in managing certain mechanisms, such as the allocation of IP addresses and the management of the top level of the domain name system.

But IP address allocation is decentralised. ICANN assigns blocks of addresses to internet providers, who then subdivide those blocks and hand out smaller blocks to their customers, who can then subdivide them further. And the routing of IP addresses is not controlled by ICANN, but by mutual agreement.

The situation with domain names is even further from what Dr Ang claims it to be. Anyone - anyone - can set up their own domain name system. I have. It's great. Anything under my mu.nu domain resolves directly without me having to type in the "mu.nu" part. I have created my very own nigh-inexhaustible supply of TLDs. Of course, no-one else uses them, because the mutual agreement is missing, so their utility is limited to saving me some typing. Most people who set up a network do basically the same thing, creating their own little set of TLDs. That's how DNS works, that's how it was designed to work. If you don't like it, you can set up your own. What you can't do is steal the existing one.

There's a dicussion going on at Protein Wisdom which has a better signal-to-noise ratio than such things often do. How long that state lasts now that Jeff's resident moonbat troll has arrived is an open question.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:48 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Sad News

Pixie the cat, who I mentioned in an earlier post, passed away this afternoon. She will be missed.

Pixie in younger and happier days.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:13 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Fruit Bat Is Off

Looks like scientists have found the infection reservoir for Ebola: Fruit bats.

Never did like fruit bats.

(via Balloon Juice)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:32 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Exterminate!

While waiting for the bleeding to slow, I implemented subdomain elimination in Snark. We hadn't really needed it until now, but today we're getting small amounts of spam from dozens of different subdomains. They were still getting blocked fairly effectively, but the blacklist was getting longer and Snark was slowing down - it had used nearly 20 seconds of CPU time over the past week.

Fixed now.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:42 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Notes From Life

1. I never want to deal with another real estate agent as long as I live. They suck.

2. I am almost walking normally again.

Ow. Fuck. Ow. Another move, another scissors-related foot injury. OW.

3. My brother's cat, Pixie (pure coincidence), is not well. Please send happy cat thoughts her way.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:26 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Supporting The Troops

Most U.S. troops will leave Iraq within a year because the Army is "broken, worn out" and "living hand to mouth," Rep. John Murtha told a civic group.

Eep?

Murtha predicted most troops will be out of Iraq within a year.

"I predict he'll make it look like we're staying the course," Murtha said, referring to Bush. "Staying the course is not a policy."

"Staying the course is not a policy"?

He said a civil war is likely because of ongoing factionalism among Sunni Arabs, and Kurds and Shiites.

Yeah, so we should opt for

immediate redeployment

What was that, Rep. Murtha?

immediate redeployment

and leave them to it.

I won't question his patriotism; I'll just point out that he's a partisan hack and an idiot.

(FOXNews)

Update: The Commissar has his own take on the story.

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